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Foreign students share their experience of living in Moscow dorms. It is not the best experience as very often there is minimal comfort and huge hygienic problems. Students share their beds with bedbugs and cockroaches plus there are frequent problems with leaky ceilings. Of course, these accommodations are not the first choice of students, but because of a very expensive rent in Moscow, they don’t really have a choice.

Kudakwashe Ndlova, a 25-year-old student attending Lomonosov Moscow University of Fine Chemical Technology, shares this obshaga with one other student from Russia.

Nigerian students Christopher Onoja, top, 22, and Issac Ismaila, bottom, 24, both came to Russia on a scholarship. "Honestly, I don't like anything about this place because the rooms are full of roaches and bedbugs. We renovated — the lighting, the wallpaper, everything — but it was a mess when we arrived," Onoja said.

Dinara Vafina, a 26-year-old music student at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, told Dumont, "I don't have a problem living with roommates, but I would like to get my own place someday." According to Dumont, rooms shared between three and four people are generally around $50 a month a person if the students are not on scholarship.

Yang Zhao, a 25-year-old student from Beijing, tried to find an apartment when coming to Moscow for school, but she encountered what Dumont calls "xenophobic landlords." "I made phone calls for two months, and when someone would hear my accent and discover I was Chinese, they would say 'nyet!'"

According to Elena, attendants check in on students every night at 9 p.m. “They ask how you are. If your flat is dirty, they tell you what to clean,” she said. “If [the attendant] doesn’t see me for a while, she will make note of it and report it to my parents.”

Dumont reflects on the dorm life of these students: "Every obshaga is home to its unique culture and set of rules, but residents all face the same challenge: make a home within a limited space and with limited resources."